Nancy Welsh

Professor of Law at the Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University.  J.D., Harvard University; B.A., Allegheny College.

Professor Nancy Welsh is a leading scholar in the field of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) with research and writing focusing primarily on negotiation and court-connected and agency-connected mediation. She has examined the procedural justice offered by these processes, their potential to resolve non-legal as well as legal issues, and the effect that the courts and institutionalized “alternative” processes have had on each other.  In 2006, as a Fulbright Scholar, Professor Welsh conducted research regarding the Netherlands’ nationwide implementation of court-connected mediation and taught in the Private Law Department of Tilburg University.

For nearly ten years, Professor Welsh was the executive director of Mediation Center, a nonprofit ADR organization serving Minnesota, and as a member of the Minnesota ADR Review Board, advised the Minnesota Supreme Court regarding the institutionalization of ADR in the state’s courts. She is currently Chair of the ADR Section of the Association of American Law Schools and a member of the Governing Council of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Conflict Resolution Quarterly, the Independent Standards Commission of the International Mediation Institute, the Mediation Advisory Board of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution.

In 1997, just before joining the faculty of Penn State Law, Professor Welsh’s peers selected her as a leading Minnesota attorney. Professor Welsh practiced corporate litigation with the Minneapolis law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard. She mediates contract, employment and public policy matters; consults with courts on dispute resolution system design and evaluation; and trains attorneys and judges in mediation skills.

Professor Welsh teaches Civil Procedure, Negotiation/Mediation, Conflict Resolution Theory Seminar, and Constitutional Law. She is faculty advisor for the Certificate in Dispute Resolution and Advocacy and the student-run ADR Society.

Author of:

I Could Have Been A Contender: Iqbal As Deterrent to Negotiation, Mediation and Other Forms of Early, Autonomous Dispute Resolution.1 114 Penn St. L. Rev. ___. *(forthcoming in Iqbal Symposium Issue)

From the Author:

1This author welcomes responses to this abstract and the upcoming article.  The author may be contacted at:

Scholarly Dialogues Series:

Professor Welsh will presented her work in the Scholarly Dialogues Series on February 25, 2010.